Tribe

Watching. Distant our minds grow from our bodies. We gaze at ourselves through the television, intelligence pouring from our faces like the fall of water onto rocks, streaks of lightning from a clouded sky breaking into the earth. We become objects, glistening with light, charged forms of desire, tremoring, moving across the surface of time like possessed animals, indefinable symbols.

Do you see the flood, O man in the suit, O man of the mirrored fortress?
Do you see what you have ruined in yourself? Do you think words will save
you now? Do you think that your past will teach you how to breathe
under
water?

There is no narrative that can encapsulate us. We are not a nation, we are not a generation. We are eyes, taking out the world, giving in the world.

We are love,
consuming everything,
holding onto nothing.

(Feb 7, 2000)

Did i say “love”? Such a trademarked term, traditional, safe. Not love, then. It is the experience of the moment i’m speaking of, the pushing forward like the prow of a ship through time, the forward falling pulse of a hi hat in a jazz stream. It’s the refusal to hold back any longer, the sudden spontaneous agreement to let go of everything and let yourself be whatever it is you are doing, whatever it is you are feeling. it is letting every single wave of consciousness that hits you run through you, refusing to stop, refusing to fall back onto what is known, what is certain, what is dead.

so then when you watch, when you sit and gaze at these dead images moving, dancing before your eyes, you are looking past everything you see. you know that these forms are meaningless, these words, these illusions. but you go with it, you let it take you, because you are no longer scared, you know that there’s nowhere that you can go that will take you away from what you aren’t. it is acknowledging that you could never possibly capture it, that you could ever possibly understand. it is accepting that every moment is a death, every moment is a birth.